


letters home

by DictionaryWrites2



Series: 20th century gays do gay shit [2]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Epistolary, Fluff, Letters, Love Letters, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-17 19:56:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18971968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites2/pseuds/DictionaryWrites2
Summary: A letter about Mr Fell and his husband, Anthony.





	letters home

Chez Bernice Lodging House

Montparnasse, Paris

I don’t know the date, dearest,  
but it is some time past noon,  
and the lilacs are blooming  
splendidly. I am sure, as last I  
was, that the year remains 1922.

My dear and beloved Ginger,

I write to you from the desk at my lodging house, wherein I shall stay another few weeks, at least, and if not, I shall leave them with a forwarding address, that your next reply should be delivered unto me with the greatest of alacrity. How I ache for your next word, when we are gone from one another, even now – I do like Paris immensely, but her embrace is a paltry ghost of yours, my love, and I should have your arms about me once more, as soon as my work here is done.

Mr Fell and Mr Crowley are visiting here, and Mr Fell tells me when I send my letter that he’ll do his strange bit of working on the parchment of my envelope – I know not what it is he does, nor what connections he draws upon, but he has a way of ensuring no letter is opened and read, nor even looked at strangely, as it makes its way upon its journey, except by its intended recipient. Is that not strange? I think it marvellously so, but such is the way of Mr Fell, as long as it has been. He is the proprietor of that bookshop, you know the one, with those two floors, and the spiral staircase that has hanging baskets hanging from its every step, hosting such splendid, viridian plants? Strawberries grow from that stair come springtime, you know, and it is owing to Anthony’s – that is to say, Mr Crowley’s, but the spirit does rebel at calling him Mr overmuch, for one gets the sense that he is smug about such things – paternal care of the things, for he waters them and feeds them, and I thought for such a time that he spoke to them as some men do, but Mr Fells tells me that actually, he whispers to them vile threats.

Oh, I do hope you remember them, Ginger – you’ve met them in passing each twice before, but my remarks will make so little sense if you’ve forgotten them. Mr Fell – Ezra the name he gives, although his initials are A.Z. – is a portly fellow some ways shorter than me, with round cheeks and eyes that are the hue of the sea in a watercolour painting (you know, husband, what I mean, I hope? That sort of blue-green, rendered dainty by the sun?), and he has blond hair that is lank but somehow rather charming, long strands that he draws back from his face. He wears spectacles, at times, these crescent-shaped things on golden frames that do naught to encourage a youthful reading of his features, but those features are, I will assure you, most well-preserved – the only lines that show on him are the happy crinkles at his eyes, and the furrow in his brow he gets when he reads, which is, of course, very often. He keeps such wonderful hands, you know, and he has taught me all a manicurist would never. Mr Crowley is a tall fellow, gangling in an infuriatingly graceful manner, and with such a handsome face that upon meeting him, one is usually agog for a few moments before one remembers that, much as he looks as one, he isn’t an artistic exhibit – it’s quite strange, you know, for often I find myself finding in his features some curious dimple or movement of the face I have seen in a painting or a sculpture of which I am fond, and yet how his face moves, how expressionate it is! Oh, he is handsome, Ginger, but in the most uncanny way, so much so that it does rather unsettle one, if one lingers on the thought too often. He is possessed of rather too much muscle, which clings to his skinny frame as if he is packing it to smuggle, and he always wears these sunglasses, for he is possessed of a strange condition of the eye. Dark hair, always windswept, but in a somewhat dashing way.

Reading this back, I rather worry it seems I might be in love with Anthony, but you must understand he is quite unbearable, and a wreck of nerves, besides his marriage to Mr Fell, and while he is handsome, that handsomeness is strange and eldritch, in its way, as if it ought perhaps be locked away rather than cooed over, as is my usual wont.

Oh, Ginger, you do remember them, you must.

In any case, I am taken away with them in turns. They are so dreadfully in love, and it makes me pang for the want of you, so far from me, you know. I don’t believe I have ever seen a pair of souls so utterly bound up with one another, and it rather takes me away to see them: they rather treat me as if I am some beloved nephew of theirs, or perhaps a son they have recently come into possession of, although this has always been their manner with me. I rather think that this is Mr Fell’s manner with every young fellow of a certain bent, if you take my meaning, for he is a great patron of the Hyacinth and Vine, that gentlemen’s club on Portland Place, and I rather think he oft has his angel’s wings spread out for young gay fellows to gather under, as if he is an umbrella against the coming storm. He is an angel, in many a way, and so too is his husband: I cannot name a time where we came into contact and he did not bail me out of some spot of trouble, and Anthony is so cruel to policemen, he must be a saint to all with a heart in defiance of the law. I should be rather seduced by religion, if the figures were a bit more like Mr Fell and his young beau, and less with all this business with priests and sacraments and so on.

In any case, I think often on you, when I see them together.

Oh, my love, to think that we might be like that, at one time, together, bound up forever. It is in the way they treat each other, you see, in the little soft mannerisms of a life together.

I asked Mr Fell how they met, and he said to me, “Oh, well, you know, it was… We were both working, and I was guarding the door, er, I suppose I was a receptionist, or something, something like that, and Anthony, he’d done something a bit thick, you know, as is his way. And he sort of crept up to me and rather startled me, but he accosted me with the most enticing small talk – you know, dear boy, about the work, but about the weather, and about philosophy… And it was beginning to rain, so I put out my— We shared an umbrella, and you know, fiendish creature that he is, he came so much closer than he needed to.”

“Did you love him,” I asked, “even then?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, and his watery eyes seemed to sparkle with seafoam, and for a moment I fancied he was a thousand years away from me, frolicking in some place with Anthony in his arms. “Oh, yes, dear boy, I always rather did.”

Oh, they are so superbly in love with one another that it makes one most angry at them. They seem so happy, do you know? One must hate those who are so deeply happy that they find themselves quite unconcerned with the happiness of others…

I have watched Mr Fell with Anthony, and oh, how he besets upon him: he fusses over his clothes and his hair, reaches up to comb it properly, or to adjust his tie or the set of his waistcoat. Several times, I have watched him reach over to remove things from Anthony’s pockets, and use them as casually as he might use his own; he always orders the wine, for Anthony knows little about such things, and he tells Anthony the history of every bottle he touches, and Anthony looks at him with his lips parted and such devotion painted on his face, and surely in his eyes, although I could not see them to judge by. He often asks Anthony if he is too cold, although the weather here is very fine, and sometimes I believe Anthony says yes merely that Mr Fell will fuss over him, and fuss he does: he will draw off his own jacket or his scarf and set it about Anthony’s shoulders, and draw him close to embrace him, that he might share the heat of his body! I don’t know that I have ever seen a fellow cup another man’s cheek with such tenderness as Mr Fell cups Anthony’s, nor seen a man lean so gracefully into another’s palm, that he might bestow a kiss upon his wrist.

I asked Anthony how they met, and he told me, “Well, the first time, it was in this garden, and it was… You couldn’t imagine it, this garden, but it was beautiful. Verdant, luscious, with fruit heavy in the trees and flowers in a meadow on the ground, and I’d had the worst of days, the worst day that had ever been, so far – that I’d ever had, er, I mean, that I’d ever had – and I looked at him at the gate and he just looked so…” He took off his sunglasses, presently, and laid them upon his thigh, and I saw his eyes, which are so very serpentine, when one sees them like this – they are a sort of bright yellow, and the pupil has some manner of coloboma, or something like it, so that on each side they are rather like the eyes of a cat, or a snake. Now, they were misted with memory. “He’s never been handsome, you know. Not… Not like you think of it, he’s not that sort of man. Even if you put a handsome face on him, he’d _make_ it less handsome, just by living in it, you know? But I looked at him, and I thought, oh, don’t you fit in with all this fruit, and all this grass, and all these flowers? Aren’t you a juicy, delicious thing, waiting to be plucked and eaten, and then I got closer, and I… Miles, young man—” (He often calls me _young man_ , although I don’t know that I am so much younger than he is, and yet at times I think he is unutterably old and merely hides the evidence from his face.) “Have you ever seen a fruit on a tree, and it looked so perfect, just the right colour, with the light hitting it right, and so perfectly ripe you couldn’t bear to pull it down?”

“Oh, yes,” I said.

“He was like that,” Anthony said, and he looked so immensely happy that I nearly burst into tears.

Oh, if Mr Fell pays his court to Anthony, now, although they’ve been happily together such years, he pays it back a thousandfold. You should see the way he dotes on this fellow, pays for everything, but the way he looks at Mr Fell as if he is the world and a half, as if he is so immensely beautiful and wonderful and perfect, and he says it all!

He calls him “angel” and whispers in his ear, and brings him such gifts and presents, and kisses him and touches him, holds his hands and kisses his knuckles… He orders his meals, you know, and he eats so little, Mr Crowley, but he always orders desert for himself and only eats a bite, and then slides the rest over to Mr Fell so that he might have two, and isn’t that the most darling thing you’ve ever heard? Isn’t it so awfully lovely?

Oh, my heart is full of them, Ginger – I wish I could be similarly full of you.

Do write me soon, my dearest, my only one, for my heart longs for your handsome hand upon the page (almost as much as I long for it in my own).

Yours (and only yours, always),

Miles


End file.
